We don't usually play music during TeAtime, but I've always thought that several songs on U2's Achtung Baby have a particularly good rhythm.

I had one who hated coloring. I wanted her to learn the block colors though, so I preselected the crayons/colored pencils that were necessary and let her draw a line down them in the right color, not color them all the way in.

That is so sweet. I would probably frame it before the acid in the tape harms it.

A painting of the gardens at Versailles.

My friend had a daughter who did this. They did keep her head buzzed for a couple of years on and off until she stopped.

But I suppose one good thing for me is that I don't have many relatives in my generation having babies to fight over the good names. One sil stopped at two and chose really popular names. BIL and his wife choose names that I would never use, because I think they aren't very attractive, and my brother and his wife haven't had kids.

I don't want names that are too popular either. I was even annoyed that one of my daughters' names showed up on the Freakanonics 2015 list, although due to recent royal weddings and their relatives, I now won't be surprised if the authors were correct. Hmph.

I am glad I am not the only one with rules. Though I have broken one. My husband and I have the same first initial, so I used to say I would never use it for my kids, but we have used it -- twice. I have an old baby name book of British names and realized recently that every name we have used, except for one middle name, could all be found on one two-page spread. Unfortunately, I don't think I like the rest of the names on those pages. I kind of wish we had found out what we are having to narrow the search a bit.

Do you name your kids after someone? Stick with all the same initials? Choose at random? Do you worry about what the initials spell or if all the kids names fit together with each other? I'm pregnant with our 7th child and I think I am out of names. All of our kids have very British names. One is named after a relative, but the rest were simply given names we liked. I do try to make their names all sound like they fit together and I worry about initials. I think this poor child is just going to be nameless. So how do you pick names?

I haven't used it or even looked at the book, but considering how many of the main people at MP are Catholic, I doubt it would be offensive. Creationist doesn't have to mean YE.

:grouphug: Right there with you.

My Catholic Faith Delivered is $25/per child per year. So it is kind of pricey. But not the most expensive option out there.

My kids use this: http://www.emusictheory.com/practice.html

Very clever, though out-dated, since it is missing Obama.

I'm sorry you are having a rough time. This has been a rough pregnancy for me as well. It sure was easier to be pregnant when I wasn't quite so old. And the bolded part has definitely been true for me. I remember after my last daughter was born, bursting into tears and just sobbing, for no discernible reason. With my last son, I know I didn't do that at all.

If you search on here, we've talked about them before. I don't think I've seen anyone mention using them. Talking things over while sitting on the couch has been so effective that I don't think the DVDs would give much more. I don't think informal logic is like Latin, where I find it very helpful to have a teacher who knows more about the subject than I do.

Did you find any difference in your emotional state depending upon whether you were pregnant with a boy or girl? We don't find out what we're having, though I am some what sure the U/S tech messed up and said this was a boy, but I've been a teary, emotional mess and looking backwards, I think that fits more with my girl pregnancies. I mean, I melt down at times in any pregnancy, but I think I had many more difficult spots to get through when I was pregnant with girls. Which made me wonder if anyone else had noticed anything of the sort.

If you don't want the tests and don't think you will need your own book or an answer key then just getting the student book should be fine. I use the TM for tests though we do most of the chapter work orally and as the book went on, I found I need the answers sometimes to make sure we were getting questions correct.

Also, even if you have had pertussis, don't think you have life long immunity. Just as the vaccine wears off, so does immunity from having it.

Would talking to other people who converted from Judaism to Catholicism be helpful or confusing? There is a blogger I enjoy reading whose family did that. http://simchafisher.wordpress.com/

I like WWE, because (especially if you use the workbooks) it is super easy to implement and it always gets done around here. After using it for a few years now, I see how it is helping my girls learn to write. It is also good because it does not make kids do all the physical writing at first, which has helped my reluctant handwriter be a bit more willing to compose. I can't say my girls always love it. One long dictation passage had my daughter declaring she would never inflict this on her kids. As for WWS, my son has really liked it. It is written so that a student can do a lot on their own and it walks them through a lot of how to write using various writing styles. I think it is his favorite writing program yet. I do think it would be a bit much for most fifth graders. My son is doing it in sixth grade and is already a decent writer.

Sounds lovely. I too would love to have a copy.

As for this, isn't that the case with almost any curricula? How much time do you have? How much money do you have? For me, buying something already put together is almost always worth it. Nothing much would get done otherwise. But, if money were tighter at the moment (not that it is flowing freely, nor have we found the money tree in the backyard) I would work harder at putting more things together on my own.

I only used one level -- Greek Heroes. I liked it a lot for my son. I'm not really sure why I didn't continue, other than I couldn't do everything and this year my oldest has been using WWS and my youngers use WWE. I haven't used CW or WT, but I hear it is similar in it's approach to writing, but easier to follow than CW.

I suspect there are at least two reasons one doesn't hear as much about the upper grades. First, MP still has several levels only in a beta version, so a lot of people probably haven't bought them. Second, at least for me, once I feel locked into a timeline schedule, I don't want to backtrack and use their plans in full for my older kids. By that I mean, when I started looking at MP plans, we had all finished a year of ancients, and I didn't want to do another year. But I could start a K'er fresh with their plans and then move through history on their schedule, but I don't want to reboot my other kids in the middle of the cycle.